Caste and gender in Tamil Cinema: Phallic Rehabilitation in the Neo-Native film Dharma Durai

ABSTRACT

Dharma Durai/Lord Dharma [Seenu Ramasamy, 2016] makes significant departures from the fundamental tenets of the neo-nativity cinema genre whose moorings, as Sundar Kaali argues in the context of a select study of Tamil films in the late 1970s, are in the phallic injury of the hero and the disciplining of the heroine, phenomena that continue to inform a large number of New Wave blockbusters since 2004. I discuss the subversive tendencies that disrupt the hegemonic narratives of caste and culture in neo-native films such as Dharma Durai as well as in path-breaking predecessors such as Veyil/Sunshine (Vasanta Balan, 2006), Naadodigal/Vagabonds (Samuthirakani, 2009) and Aadukalam/Playground (Vetrimaaran, 2011) in the sphere of romantic narratives. I argue that the “actantial energy/agency” of the village that injures the hero in the Neo Nativity Film in Kaali’s thesis (Kaali, Sundar. 2000. “Narrating Seduction: Vicissitudes of the Sexed Subject in Tamil Nativity Film.” In Making Meaning in Indian Cinema, edited by Ravi Vasudevan, 168–190. Oxford and New York: Routledge.) is revised in Dharma Durai as the narrative ultimately transfers agency from the rural caste community to the companionate romantic relationship, especially onto the figure of the modern heroine.

KEYWORDS:

• Tamil cinema
• Dharma Durai
• neo-nativity
• caste
• “phallic injury”
• Sundar Kaali

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I thank the anonymous reviewers for their productive comments, which have helped me strengthen the arguments of my article.

2 The name Dharman/Dharmar/Dharma Raja refers to the eldest of the Pandava brothers in Mahabharata. In this Seenu Ramasamy film the mother names all her sons after the Pandavas hoping for sibling solidarity. Dharman in the epic epitomises justice and moral righteousness. The film is named after its central character Dharma Durai (played by Vijay Sethupathi), who is socially-minded and generous. The director had wanted to name the film Dharman, but the producer R.K.Suresh had suggested the name Dharma Durai; the director had accepted the title with the understanding that anyone who practices “Dharmam” is a “Durai” (Seenu Ramasamy 2016). “Durai” in Tamil refers to a chief/ lord/ruler, a socially superior person, who is in the position to be benevolent. The notion of generosity thus takes on a caste hue. For this context, see Srinivas and Kaali (1998).

3 In Paruthiveeran the eponymous hero (played by Karthi) is a half-caste, one who is born of the marriage between a lower caste mother (from Kuravan caste) and a backward caste Thevar father. He is therefore clearly considered an outcast and not fit to marry the pure-caste Thevar heroine Muththazhagu (played by Priya Vasudev Mani) by her family. Incidentally, Paruthiveeran’s father and Muththazhagu’s mother are siblings, and thus there is a cousinly relation, and thus marital possibility between the courting couple.

4 Prasad (2000, 147) writes of the “subordinate status” of the “feudal family romance … as an object of nostalgia, a lost object, the desire for whose repossession is the driving force behind the action” of “the early 1970s” Hindi cinema.

5 This neo-native film tradition of destroyed romances is one of the key facets in the iconic films of Bharathiraja. In his Pathinaaru Vayathinele/ At the Age of Sixteen the caste affiliation of the orphan Chappani (played by Kamal Haasan) is indeterminate. Chappani murders the villain (played by Rajinikanth) to prevent the rape of his fiancée Mayil (Sridevi), which puts him in jail, and Chappani’s return is eternally awaited by Mayil.

6 Avenging the death of family members is a popular plot in many films such as Apoorva Sagodharargal/Rare Brothers (Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, 1989), a thematic that is also revisited in the recent spectacular box office hit Mersel/Zapped (Atlee Kumar, 2017) in which actor Vijay plays the avenging hero.

7 At the end of Vettaiyadu Villaiyadu/Hunt and Play (Gautham Vasudev Menon, 2006), Raghavan (played by Kamal Haasan) marries Aradhana (played by Jyothika) who is a divorcee with a child in the action thriller film. In Taramani/Locality named Taramani in Chennai (Ram, 2017) the misogynistic hero lives with a divorced woman and child.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Divya A

Divya A is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. Her research interests are in the fields of gender, culture, and spatiality in literature and Tamil cinema.